It used to be that families cruised together in wooden boats to uncrowded anchorages. Fifty years later, on another ocean, I'm glad to still be there: • "Alone Together: Saili...
This was good to see. Our family acquired a 22' Columbia in the late 60's. We were cruising by the mid 70's, in a VERY similar fashion : two weeks with my brother, 3 years older, and Mom and Dad, from Gloucester to Marthas Vineyard. No super 8 film, more color slides.. fun times. Made me think that MV was really far away since we often took 4 days to get there!
How fortunate for you and your brother............with both parents.........and you filmed it and are able to relive at any time. I wonder how often your brother might have replayed these cruises in his head as he hunkered down in Vietnam.......just takes my breath away. Thank you so much.
1961 the year i was born. It caught my eye being from new york near City Island. I really LIKED tbis video almost a tear jerker.. Bless you mom for always doing the dishes lol..
I know this has been out for years, but I just found it. And I must say thank you. This is, without doubt, the most outstanding sailing video I have run across. Thank you so much.
What fabulous parents, to have given you such great experiences from toddlerhood. It shows in your narrations today. They did a great job. And all those gorgeous wooden boats...oh my!
What a trip down memory lane. I will share this film with our sail racing friends. Our family captured a bit of that long ago by taking our kids as they grew to charter in the North Channel of Lake Huron. The whole family together without electronics. Priceless.
Your mom is the unsung heroine in this movie. Be it at the helm, down below cooking and washing up, or on deck...there she was smiling and all the while looking so glam in gorgeous scarves and movie star sunglasses. 💕
What a great Friday Night! Went to town for some sushi and an ice cold Sapporo, then joined you on a sail to Hawaii and a trip down memory lane! Thanks for the adventure, Mr. Williams.🍻
Hey Christian - I love your videos. My father, born in 1907 was from Elizabeth, New Jersey but left at age 15 to migrate across the country to end up in Hemet CA. He bought his first sailboat when I was 8 (tomorrow I will be 58). We learned to sail haphazardly in Marina Del Ray but soon became fairly competent. I marvel at my mother as well - she was a hearty and adaptable companion and crew with my dad. I would love to have those times on film. Thanks for sharing this.
In Greek nostalgia literally means 'The pain from an old wound.' Its a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone...It goes backwards and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. (Don Draper) Thank you Mr. Williams for sharing your nostalgia, It has taken me to that same place I ache to go again.
At about the 9 min mark I was just thinking there's something special about people who grow up on the water and you started talking about your mom. Just a great piece of history, thank you.
A Fascinating nostalgic glimpse of sailing in the early sixties, with long overhangs, sitting headroom and deck leaks. I remember the 50ft of 16mm film that had to be split down the middle and spliced together to make 100ft of 8mm. Your mum must have been an absolute treasure. Thanks for the upload.
What a wonderful series of memories brought back to life... I too started out on Long Island, but didn't start sailing till we moved to California (as my dad was in the aerospace industry). My younger brother and I rented a sabot sailboat in San Diego when our dad was giving a speech at a spaceflight conference and it led to designing, building and sailing a custom catamaran the year after high school. Sailing is just affordable space travel.
Enjoyed your home movies. I've sailed in SoCal for years, trips to Catalina Island, Newport, Channel Islands, but the kids never really liked it and as soon as they could, they stopped going. I sold my last boat, a Beneteau 40, about four years ago when the costs began to outgrow the fun, since we couldn't use it all that much.
Grew up in Philadelphia. Never sailed as a kid, the river was to polluted for that. Served in the army instead of the navy, and have always been sensitive to motion, I get sea sick. Car sick too when a kid. Yet I have always been drawn to the sea. Used to walk the docks in Philia looking at the old sailing ships, dreaming. First learned to sail in Hoby cats. Then Annapolis sailing school. Wanted my family to grow up on boats. We have had 3 so far. Kids never had much interest. As you said, they are torn between their interests these days. Computers and the internet, while making life better in so many ways, have put a wedge into activities like the ones your family grew up. Sounds like your father was a dreamer. Good thing to be IMO. I'm looking to sail again soon, when the requirements of earning a living fade, and I have time to do what I want to. To feed my soul. When my kids are grown and on their own paths. One path closes, another opens. The wheel turns. Thanks for the memories.
Going to do the same, one door is closing after 26 years on my job, I'm eligible to retire but I'll be there another 3 years until my last two children finish school and college. After that, I plan to buy and sailboat (I used to have one years ago) and return to sailing.
Hope you get around to it Bob. Me and my father just got our first sailboat this year after many years of waiting for the right boat and saving. Never been happier with a purchase. Going to have to do some bluewater stuff once we are more experienced. Good luck with yours, hopefully, it will be sooner rather than later!
@@brandonedwards1181 Thanks. Right now living the dream, retired on a 40 foot land yacht... lol. Been on the road for several months now, and while I am loving it, still dream of the open ocean, at night, passage making, but my son is in college now, other one moving on to Portland. I travel with a German Shepherd dog now, and don't think he would take to the sea, but one of these days, he will pass, and then maybe. Glad you found you dream. To many I have known have passed on with it only being a dream. Sad. Fair winds!
Great film thank you! I was 10 in 1956 and did a similar family cruise on a 19 ft sloop. My uncle, 3 cousins and I did a week to Tobaga Island from Balboa, Panama. Got me hooked on cruising!!
wonderful! I've just purchased a 1978 30ft broom skipper.. river cruiser.. needs a loving owner with skills,time and money! The maritime journey continues! I completed my first sailing course last summer aged 45 years.. loved it. obviously should have been done at school but no regrets.. induced my 16 and 11 year old... it was as if they had been born in a Pico! Thanks for the posts
Thanks for sharing your family with us, those old memories are so much better if you can go back and see them over. Coming from another experience growing up in rural Appalachia Kentucky the son of a logger and grandson of a sawmill owner those memories are where I can go to remember the unity and love of a large family. Thanks again.
I just stumbled across this and watched it twice. I really enjoyed it. I was not born till 1971, things were so much simpler back then. Thanks for sharing!
1961 - the year of my birth, and yet I too have cinefilm memories and a connection to the sound of a projector. Not many 'modern' families have such connections to their past that evoke happy memories of endless summers and simpler times.
Thank you for sharing these wonderful memories! My father had a dream of sailing also but opted to buy a small island in the Exumas, Bahamas back in 1962. Dennis Cay is the name of the island and is located in the Pipe Creek sectional on the cruising charts. We spent our summers there building a small cabin on the ocean beginning in 1967. He sold the island in 1994 and I have just purchased a Hunter 40 with the idea of "getting back" to the islands! Thanks again for these extraordinary personal home movies! Loved it!
I grew up with a father who was a Herreshoff fan. He spent summers in Falmouth, Ma on "Cape Cod" and learned to sail and got his first boat at age 11 and then became a top junior sailor throughout all the yacht clubs with sailing programs in southern New England that competed against each other (which is how my mother who summered in RI found out about him). I wish he were alive to watch your videos. He'd LOVE them. He taught me to sail on our Herreshoff 12 1/2 . We later had a Cape Cod Marlin which I raced in the first Herreshoff Rendesvous in Bristol, RI. .Before I was born he raced S- boats.
well done its how we grew up same way in small boats and they got bigger ,and we did to , and now i see those old boats still around and reflect back and wonder how we did it ,still sail the same waters , but we dont have the lead line and spinning log any more and the boats have come along thanks ,,,,,,,,,,,,,
How fortunate you were to have such a great family, or at least, you do a great job of portraying that. Your videos always take me back to somewhere I've never actually been. Thanks for sharing.
very late to the party but i just want to tell you how very much i've enjoyed all of your videos, but this one in particular. thank you very much for sharing. you're a talented story teller and i hope you're still sailing and doing well today.
You are one of my few favorite people. You are apparently my role model. When im out on the water and fear sets in or I doubt myself and my boat. I do think of you. Thanks.
Jumping off the sand hills at Port Jeff, going through Plum Gut, going ashore at Dodson's in Stonington to walk up to the store, the ferry at Shelter Island....summer cruise memories. I was a decade later than you, so it was fiberglass boats for us.
Great stuff.. having a film camera back then was quite a luxury. .. Long Island Sound ! Ha ! We sail out of Greenwich Point. Just started getting back into it. Huge fan of the new pocket-rocket cruisers. There are some beautiful modern classics .. Morris makes some incredible boats and Brooklin BoatYard up in Maine makes dream boats i.e. 82’ Sloop. 👈 😎Probably my favorite.
Great memories! I grew up doing the same thing. My family started cruising in 1969 on a Pearson coaster. We sailed out of Hempstead harbor. My dad would close his medical practice for the month of July and we would head to New England. I now sail out of RYC in Perth Amboy. Small world.
My parents started shooting 8mm before I was born in 1958. A thrilling Sunday evening for us as kids or teens, is when Dad would get the Bell & Howell projector and screen out and pick a dozen reels at random for us all to watch and eat scones that Mum had just baked. I know just how you feel looking at this footage. And yes, the sound of the projector...irreplaceable.
Great video; and great stories. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you very much for uploading this. I am a father of two, who sails. It is very hard to get families into sailing today for some odd reason. It really is a mystery to me. I, myself, love sailing; but it seems to me that wives and children these days are very spoiled. They just can't seem to live without the smallest modern conveniences, even for short periods. I just can't understand it. Times sure seem to have changed from those days. I find that I am a little old fashioned. I would have fit into those days quite well.
+Bob Simmons My four kids, oldest 45, came along if asked but never really felt the pull. My six grandchildren are overwhelmed by options, playdates, sports, tutors, travel, video games, Spotify, RU-vid, cell phones and summer programs at great universities, and their parents are also pulled apart like taffy b y their own multiple invitations and interesting things to do. When I was a kid, steering a boat was power only exceeded by the driving license for which we yearned and dreamed. It was that, or baseball. So, it's just that sailing has competition, it seems to me. I think if the video game Halo existed when I was 15, I would never have cast off a line.
unplugging from modern life offers opportunities to get intimate with your kids, family and friends. Settling into some boredom or coping with being stuck in dead calm can be some of the most vivid memories along with thrilling beam reaches under 18knots. With all the distractions it is more important than ever for me and my kids to get away from it all and enjoy each other. Boating has been perfect for that. We are pushing off for this cruise August 6th.
I remember Pacific Palisades Marineland was there my father and mother would take me to Marineland to see the whales sometimes we stopped at the Pike which was an amusement park in Long Beach I have such great memory there maybe that's why I have the sailboat in Long Beach at this time but anyhow all that footage reminds me of that time thank you so much.
Beautiful memories, no doubt! Enjoyed seeing the recordings. That's something I enjoy, documenting so others may share the memories and experiences. Thanks for sharing.
You mention around 5 minute mark or so that people don't do this anymore... Actually we do! My kids have grown up doing this! Favorite stop is the Thimble Islands...and of course Watch Hill, RI and Fishers and Block....
Thanks for sharing...reminds me of Mr. Biddle's films. He used to travel around and show his films and narrate them live... They were absolutely wonderful!.... And the projector sound was so very memorable!
The Sound still provides some good sailing, gunkholing and interesting harbors. Often a lot busier, but you can still find days when you’re alone out there. And that southwest breeze usually means beating to get home. Thanks for the memories.
Great video - waking my memories from 60-ties in.. USSR. We sailed that old wooden boats from Odessa (Black Sea) to Kherson (on Dnepr river); and what a nice boats they were
Very moving video and it shows what a great country we have. I have lived on Long Island with water all around me and salt in my blood my whole life. Great family life being near the ocean. Would not trade it for a second.
amazing video. Thank you. Seeing the harbors, boats and fashion of a bygone era. Your Mom, so casually fashionable. Your dad so handsome and strong. you brothers and your hop-along cassidy sweaters. I am so glad one of your videos popped up in my reccomendation queue.
Oh, I continue to find videos from you. Life is so kind to me sometimes. I love this one,-growing up on a boat every summer as a kid. But your memory of that young kid "I hated him with a passion" It made me laugh so hard, they heard me to Sweden. Thank you so much. Fair winds ,,,,/),,,,,,
Great Memories and film, I wish I had taken more photographs when I was younger, I still shoot film, it has a look that just can't be imitated by digital. My Brother was 5 years older than me and when I watch this I think of the two of us growing up in Long Beach Ca, thanks for digging this out and converting it to digital, I really enjoyed watching it.
Christian, When i think about it, sailing is like an arctic expedition although I've never been on one. You travel out in the elements for some time until you reach the next outpost . . . when you are out there all alone, you are forced to communicate with others and that's where the real magic of the human race comes about . . . the part we all forget about in this fast paced world full of meaningless distractions but only because most of us choose it . . . I really liked this film and it has inspired me to get my wife and children sailing as soon as possible . . . tackling the elements together and spending time together without distraction . . . apart for the odd tack and gybe and don't forget to set that anchor :) Thank You!
